The Number One Mistake Everybody Makes on Twitter


There is a feature on Twitter that has been misunderstood since the day it was introduced.

Now if you're "oldschool Twitter" like I am, you'll remember that when the service launched, the "@" signal didn't have any explicit function. What happened is that users would organically use it to mention other users in their stream (my nerdy coworkers tell me this stemmed from a chat service called IRC).

Eventually, Twitter took that user behavior and actually incorporated it into the functionality of the platform, and from that day forward, people have been making the same stupid mistake.

What's the mistake, you ask? Take a look at the deck I made. It'll only take a couple seconds, and I think you'll get a few laughs in addition to the straight up educational value:

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If you found value in this, it would mean a lot to me if you shared it with your LinkedIn contacts!

Hiram Reisner

Highly Skilled News Writer, News Editor, Copy Editor, Ghostwriter

9y

Thanks for the impt update!

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Alissia J.

Growth Leader | Technology Consultant | Benevolent Mentor | Passionate Lifelong Learner | Relentless | Realist

9y

It was so entertaining I didn't notice it was 44 slides ;)

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Ian Altman, B2B Growth Advisor

Business Speaker | Strategic Advisor | Same Side Selling | Forbes, Inc., ABC7-TV, NPR, Alleged Sales Expert

10y

Gary Vaynerchuk - Thanks for supplying the virtual "Jaws of Life" to help me extract my head from my colon. I had no idea Twitter was working that way... and now I do. I feel like an idiot... but now an informed one. Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday at the Cadre Main Event! http://cadredc.com/MainEvent

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Manon Castonguay

Site web | Infolettre | Gestion de contenu blog et médias sociaux | Mise en page | Rédaction | Formation

10y

Good to remember!

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Olga Leonenko

Technical Writer, Engineering, Environmental, Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology

10y

Chris, thank you for your reply. I'm still learning about Twitter. I've noticed how some people use dot in front of the "@", but since I saw all replies, I never understood why. So, when you say in "my stream" - do you mean the stream that goes under twitter.com/MyName ? or something else? Anyway, I used this tip for the first time just now.

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